Posts Tagged ‘raspberry pi’

ZDNet reports that NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has released plans for folks to make their own mini version of the Mars Curiosity Rover.

JPL has released designs and instructions on the now Microsoft-owned GitHub for building the mini rover that presumably will be mostly Earth-bound, rather than roaming over Mars or any other planet, unless you’re buddies with Elon Musk.

…

JPL released the instruction kit to show that it actually does take a rocket scientist to build one of these, but that those skills can also be learned by hobbyists and students.

“One would rightfully assume it takes expertise in mechanical engineering, software development, and electronics to even begin to construct such a complex robot,” JPL says in its announcement.

“Now students, hobbyists, and enthusiasts can learn about these skills and get a taste of what it is like to construct such a rover using plans and instructions from JPL’s Open Source Rover Project.”

In other words, this isn’t one of those tin can robot kits, because it’s from, like, NASA. But even if it isn’t something you can knock out in an hour, it’s still pretty cool of them to release it to the wild.

The Raspberry Pi is a tiny Linux-based computer that can be customized to do a lot of things. (That is an oversimplification for the sake of blog-posting brevity.) Wired.com reports that the Element 14, the company that makes the adorably named doo-hickey, has now made 500,000 of them.

Since we’re always on the lookout for news about kids and computers, we were intrigued by this quote from Eben Upton, co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation:

“The younger generation has demonstrated significant intrigue in learning how to build and program their own computer device. And what has been great to see is the enormous growth in the hobbyist market. I have seen projects from Twittering chickens to home beer-brewing kits being created using the Raspberry Pi and its accessories.”

Now, by “younger generation” Upton probably isn’t referring to little kids, although maybe there are really really really smart little kids who could turn the Raspberry Pi into something nifty. Still, we’re fans of any product that is designed to be futzed with.